Victor Malarek wins Gemini Award for best over-all broadcast journalist

by Marta Dyczok

TORONTO - Victor Malarek was not expecting to win. On the evening of March 1, when the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presented its 11th Annual Gemini Awards, the veteran investigative reporter was, as he later told The Ukrainian Weekly, on assignment in "sunny, freezing, snow-filled, frigid Sault Sainte Marie" in northern Ontario.

The next morning, he discovered that he had won the Gordon Sinclair Award, Canada's most prestigious prize in his medium, best over-all broadcast journalist, for reports compiled as co-host of "The Fifth Estate" weekly newsmagazine program.

"It was quite an exhilarating feeling," Mr. Malarek told The Weekly. "You know that you've come up against Canada's finest, and you were picked." His competition included Peter Mansbridge, noted anchor for CBC's "The National" nightly news show; fellow "Fifth Estate" co-host Francine Peltier; Eric Malling of CTV's newsmagazine "W5"; and CBC "National Magazine" reporter Brian Stewart.

When asked what the award meant to him, Mr. Malarek answered, "It means a lot to me, in particular because I came from a print background. My life was not in broadcast[ing], it had nothing to do with it. I had ink in my veins, and I had a very, very difficult time making that transition."

Currently in his seventh season at "The Fifth Estate," Mr. Malarek said he felt particularly honored since he is a relative newcomer to television. He made his reputation as a hard-hitting reporter at Canada's Toronto-based national daily newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

The Montreal-born Ukrainian has had a number of difficult transitions in his life. Having survived a difficult family situation and an abusive child care system in his native city, he escaped the streets and became a journalist, a profession in which he developed a reputation for an uncompromising style and dogged pursuit of abusers of children as well as the public trust.

His no-holds-barred style carried over to television. In the award citation, Gemini presenters mentioned three reports broadcast during the 1996-1997 season that had attracted their attention. One in which a doctor who was torturing patients in McMaster University's Brain Injury Clinic in Hamilton, Ontario, was driven out of the country. Another exposed financial wrongdoing at the Crown Life Insurance Co. The third, showing a lighter side of Mr. Malarek, was about Québec-Haitian basketball player Pascal Fleury.

The Gemini Awards, essentially a Canadian version of U.S. television's Emmy Awards, were introduced in 1986 to recognize excellence in Canada's television industry.

Each recipient of a Gemini is given a sculpture, created by designer Scott Thornly, which depicts a golden profile of a face. According to a press release issued by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, it is meant to reflect "the talent behind and in front of the cameras, illusion and reality, and the dual nature of the Canadian TV industry - English and French programming." The French Gemini counterpart is the Prix Gémeaux, awarded in a separate ceremony.

David Studer, executive producer of "The Fifth Estate," accepted the award on Mr. Malarek's behalf, saying, "Victor Malarek is a decent, compassionate man, informed by an old-fashioned sense of right and wrong, deeply offended to abuses of power, deeply committed to his profession and his family. He is richly deserving of this recognition."

Mr. Malarek's last report of the season, an investigation of 22 years of sexual abuse of young girls by their public school teacher in Sault Sainte Marie, aired on March 11.

Those who have yet to see Canada's top broadcaster in action needn't worry about a long drought without seeing him on the air. "The Fifth Estate" runs repeats during the spring and summer months, in its usual timeslots on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on the main CBC channel, and on the Newsworld channel on Wednesday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m.

The last few months have been very good to Mr. Malarek. In November 1996, Canada's biggest publishing house, Macmillan Inc., launched "Gut Instinct," his personal look back at his career in journalism, his fourth book to date.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 23, 1997, No. 12, Vol. LXV

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